Canoe

Along the jagged coast of the Chesapeake Bay, African-American slaves once paddled dugout canoes to fish, visit family and, on dark nights, row to safe houses on the Underground Railroad. Yesterday, a canoe thought to have been made by Maryland slaves went on a different type of journey - it was lifted by crane into a new museum in Fells Point that celebrates the contributions of African-Americans to maritime industry. The canoe, which historians estimate to be between 150 and 200 years old, had nearly disintegrated before being discovered by a man in Talbot County.

Just before sunset, we reached vacation nirvana. It was just us and the loons. Minnesota's Lake Vermillion was smooth, our canoe paddles hitting the water the only sound.Too bad we could stay for only a minute and a half."I'm hungry," said one child who had eaten dinner less than an hour before."I've got to go to the bathroom now," insisted another.Reluctantly, we turned our canoe back toward shore and our cabin at Ludlow's Island Resort. (Families routinely book a year in advance for one of the resort's 18 lakefront cabins.

Alina Watkins can tell that her audience is restless. She pulls out her songbook of Grateful Dead and Beatles standards and strums her guitar. And then, grinning from ear to ear, she sings the songs that they have all come to hear. "Baby Beluga, Baby Beluga," Watkins trills. "Sing your little song. Sing for all your friends, we like to hear you." And with that, the toddlers and babies shake their bells, their sippy cups full of Cheerios, their parents' keys and whatever other noisemakers are handy.

The morning sun filtered through the forest canopy like a stage light, drawing our attention to another bend in the river. We were making our way slowly upstream from Porters Crossing in a shallow channel at times not much wider than our canoes. Except for a woodpecker off in the distance, the only sound to be heard was the whoosh of paddles breaking the water.Were we experiencing the river much differently than the Pocomoke Indians who lived here three centuries ago? Probably not, although they were likely on the river searching for food.

Fourth in a series of profiles of local Olympians. He dances on the water, the churning froth around him supplying the melody. It's a tune Lecky Haller has known his entire adult life. It seduces him, tortures him, rewards him. Haller, 43, the world's premier tandem slalom canoeist, hopes the whitewater in Sydney will play him a victory song. This is not the first Olympics for the Glencoe native - he finished fourth in 1992 - but in all probability it is the last in a career that began in the early 1980s.

This weekend is the last chance for whitewater slalom kayakers and canoers to qualify for the Olympic team trials, from April 2 to 4 in South Bend, Ind. The event, at the Nantahalla Outdoor Center in North Carolina, will complete a field of 90 athletes for the South Bend competition. A number of Maryland paddlers have made the cut for South Bend, including kayakers Scott Parsons, who is ranked eighth in the world, Brett Heyl and Sarah Leith, canoer Ryan Bahn and the double canoe team of Bob Bofinger and Brian Zimmerman.

When he was 8 years old, Don Boehl loved to jump into big piles of sawdust. He and his father scavenged old wooden fruit boxes for white pine that could be made into World War I model planes. Boehl credits his dad, now 86, and a neighbor with instilling in him a love of wood. More than 20 members of the Chesapeake Wooden Boat Builders gathered recently to work on projects as varied as canoe restoration, model building and caning. The members helped one another, teaching and learning with the harmonious hum of chitchat, broken every now and then by laughter or the sound of a hammer.

When I lived for a while on Smith Island, one of my joys was to paddle the marsh creeks alone in a canoe -- until the first time a stiff breeze came up. Against tide and wind, it took me two hours to (barely) make the last mile back to the harbor.Then one day a paddling club came to the island from Crisfield across eight miles of water. Several of them, men and women, were in their 40s through 60s, fit enough, but no tri-athletes by any stretch.The sleek craft that brought them, called sea, or touring, kayaks, were a revelation.

It was a trip that would have made Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer proud.Two friends, 56-year-old Robb Newman and 69-year-old Gerhard Heiche, landed at the Tidewater Grille in Havre de Grace yesterday after a 12-day canoe trip down the Susquehanna that began at the mouth of the river in Cooperstown, N.Y.With stubbly beards and dusty clothes, the pair pulled ashore with only thoughts of grabbing a cold beer and getting out of the hot sun."Any beer would have been fine," Heiche said after he and Newman settled in the shade of the restaurant with two glasses of Oxford Blond Ale. "For the past week and a half, it's been nothing but water."